Certainly the jaw-dropping visual effects on display in the demos were exponentially better than anything we’ve seen on home consoles before.

Sony spent a significant portion of the two hour-long event explaining that there’s more to their new baby than prodigious power, though.

The company’s five keywords Simplicity, Immediacy, Social, Integrated and Personalised point to a machine that’s been custom-designed to make gaming as painless as possible.

Installations and load-times are out, replaced by instant access, seamless re-starts and digital downloads that allow you to start playing before the software’s even installed.

Social integration will be hard-wired into the PS4’s DNA, with users able to upload video to the web at the press of a dedicated button on the handsome new DualShock 4 controller.

The most ambitious boasts were saved for the console’s streaming capabilities.

Sony said they were building the world’s fastest gaming network that would enable users not just to watch their friends playing, but also jump in.

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PS4 games would be seamlessly streamable on the handheld Vita console and PlayStation Store customers will be able to instantly try new title before buying.

Many of those features were prefaced with the caveat that they were part of Sony’s ‘long-term goals’, suggesting that not everything would be available when the PS4 launches at Christmas.

Even so, all the visible evidence on show suggested already that Sony have learned from past mistakes to create a truly groundbreaking games console.

And with the pressure now on rivals Microsoft to reveal their successor to the Xbox 360, it’s well and truly game on.

THE GAMES

Sony enlisted some of gaming’s great and good to prove the PS4’s next gen credentials.

The likes of Capcom, Square Enix and Heavy Rain creator David Cage unveiled some mind-blowing tech demos but these were five of the best of the actual launch window games shown at the launch event,

1) Watch Dogs

Just as it did at E3 last summer, Ubisoft’s open world cyber terrorism hybrid stole the show with some ease. Hacker Aiden Pearce’s hi-tech rampage through a near-future Chicago was a tour de force of sumptuous next-gen graphics and thrilling emergent gameplay.

4) Killzone Shadow Fall

Yes, it was ‘just’ another installment in the sci-fi shooter series, but Shadow Fall’s graphics were genuinely out of this world. Proof the next generation of games will offer even bigger bangs for our buck.